


We Still Got Dessert

by Iron



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Found Family/Adoption, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Prowl adores his feral children, Transformers Sparklings, toothrotting fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:00:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23743438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Iron
Summary: Prowl gets into a crash, and his boys rush back to make sure he’s okay. They end up reminiscing about the first day he had them in his custody.For Day 1 of Prowl Week: “Crash”
Relationships: Jazz/Prowl, Prowl&Sunstreaker&Sideswipe
Comments: 20
Kudos: 199
Collections: Prowl Week





	We Still Got Dessert

The twins came running when they heard about the crash, though it was just an accident. A _minor fender bender_ , Jazz had called it on the comm when they reported it to them, _No reason to come crashing in after him._

Of course they hadn’t listened; they’d barely waited for their replacements to catch up with them before abandoning their patrol to race back to base. They meet Jazz at the entrance, the idiotic mech not scared enough of two barreling front liners to get out of their damn ways. 

Step-dad usually are that dumb, though, and he holds them both until they’re calm enough that Ratchet _won’t_ just get kicked out of the room as soon as Ratchet spots them. “Hey, hey, it was just a bit of a tumble on the highway. Prowl’s got a broken leg and a bit of bent kibble. Ratchet’s keeping him for a few days to make sure nothing went rattling about in that helm of his, that’s all. He’s _fine_. Sleeping off a bit of painkilling code, but that’s it.” 

It’s only their history with Jazz that lets them take him at his word, following him into the base and the medbay without vibrating out of their dam plating. 

Prowl’s asleep, of course, and Ratchet’s resting up after surgery. Probably the only reason the twins are allowed to crawl into the berth with their adoptive creator, wrapping too big, heavily armored frames around him, cradling his frame between their own. Just like he used to hold them, before they’d gotten too big and too old to want an old cop’s cuddles. 

Not too old now. 

They fall asleep like that, crowded together on a berth not meant for all three of them. 

Ratchet lets them stay, when he comes in to check up on them. He half expected it to happen, anyways. 

And, like it always is, the first mech to wake up in that berth is Prowl. 

He blinks awake slowly, waiting for his auxiliary computer to fully sync with his other systems, and reaches out with fumbling hands to pet their helms. It’s rare these days that the boys come to him needing comfort or attention. They’re full-grown damn mechs, after all, with careers and friends and people who aren’t him or their bug in their lives. 

Right now Sunstreaker has his helm on his bumper, and Sideswipe has his helm tucked just beneath it, under his headlamps, curled around Prowl like two mismatched commas. It makes his broken hip strut ache a bit, but it’s nothing he can’t handle. Not even when the damn bug sneaks in and curls up right next to the caste around his right leg. 

It’s so much, and so very different from, their first days together. It feels like lifetimes ago that the boys were dropped into his lap, half-feral and entirely awful. 

— 

He was guiding the raid on the Pits when they were found, huddled in a cell with their bug. It looks like they were put in with it as fuel, first, except the Insecticon hadn’t fueled on them, and all three were picked up in the sweep. 

The insecticon was damaged; the twins were, too, but it seemed more a matter of not having received the proper socialization or uploads than it does anything physiological. Prowl hadn’t even intended to bring them home with him, really, when they were brought into the command center. They were caught up, between the raids and the arrests and the whole damn arena being gutted, caught up and dumped in a room with him, mostly alone, and forgotten about. 

They were the only sparklings pulled from that raid - alive, anyways - and unlike a good majority of the other prisoners, they didn’t require any immediate medical attention. Other than their overworked field medic center there wasn’t anywhere to keep them, so they were shoved into the calmest place the mech who’d grabbed them could find - the tactical center. 

Prowl had only noticed they were thereafter he’d gotten his mechs out of the Pit, when he allowed himself to unhook from the auxiliary tac unit letting him see through his mech’s frame cams. The world folded in on itself, into something nice and tidy and small, and he turned to attempt to ground himself in a single, small present only to find two sparklings and a monster huddled in the room. 

He stared. They stared. The sparklings were dirty, with pale purple optics and a way of crouching that was clearly animalistic. The insecticon was massive but quiet, chewing on the cords leading from the tac computer to the generators. Not eating, just gnawing, like the action was somehow comforting. 

“... do you belong to someone?” Prowl cleared his vents, doorwings swooping back in an attempt to make himself seem smaller. It’s what birds prefer, when you first greet them; seeming too large could make them skittish. 

The mechlings flickered their optics at him, dirty little mouths pursing in odds little shapes. Their tiny engines sputtered and turned over. Finally, the red one managed to speak. “You, now. I think.” 

“I am certainly not your creator.” 

“Oh. They’re dead.” 

“You didn’t belong to the Pit Masters, either.” He turned his attention momentarily to his comm suite, quietly redirecting questions back to an on-site tactical unit member. “What are your names? Who left you here?” 

They shrugged. The yellow one, one ear-fin and a good bit of plating short from whole, bore sharp denta at him. “You don’t need to know that.” 

“You’re currently in my care, so I certainly do.” 

The mech turned his helm with a mulish expression, and Prowl watched as the insecticon pawed the ground and growled at him. 

“Or not.” He sighed. “I have several issues to clear up concerning the current campaign. I am _trusting_ you to stay in this room while I do so, until someone from Sparkling Services comes to retrieve you. Understood?” 

The red one grunted. 

_Sparklings_ , really. Who thought it was an intelligent idea to leave it with him? 

Prowl turned his full attention back to the tac unit and his direction of the cleanup effort, letting his auxiliary computer chew through information and scenarios and required background data until all but the tactical tent itself is left on the field, mechs antsy to get it packed away and their own afts off shift and back home. 

He’d stepped out, mind still in far too many directions as he coordinated the efforts for tomorrow, as well, and found himself what felt like moments later in an empty field, amidst the remains of police tape and officers on guard and Jazz, always waiting for him to tune out of his own helm after large operations. And the sparklings. Curled up in a pile with their bug, in the road, sleeping soundly despite themselves. 

Jazz crossed his arms when Prowl turned expectant optics on him. “Sparkling Services don’t answer the phone after sundown in these parts. Could bring them to the station, but you know the place is flooded with badges right now. No good corner to kit down two kids and their bug.” 

A longer look, more demanding. His helm was starting to hurt as he came back to himself, auxiliary computer dumping waste data and unused point plots as he reclaimed more of his RAM for himself. 

Jazz just kept smirking. “No room at mine, remember? I live in a closet. _You_ , on the other hand, have an apartment with two spare rooms and a full fuel prep area. It won’t kill you to let ‘me stay the night.” 

Prowl, exhausted, aching, with no desire to put the sparklings in more distress than they had already been, agreed. 

So the boys went him with him that night. 

— 

Prowl watches Sunstreaker wake up before his brother, nuzzling up against one of his headlights. Optics flicker online slowly, and then that yellow helm lifts up to look him in the optics. “What were you thinking about?” 

“Do you remember that time, a few days after I brought you home, I took you two to the park?” 

Sideswipe is still sleeping, drool smeared on Prowl’s hip as his engines hitch and roil. Prowl doesn’t doubt that Sunstreaker will share this all with his brother, later. 

It’s sweet, really. 

“No.” But Prowl can feel the guilty, embarrassed flush in his field. 

“I’d just resigned myself to keeping you until the Sparkling Center had space for you...” 

— 

The twins had been surprisingly well-behaved, Belligerent, yes, unwilling to follow simple directions, but they were neither violent nor completely without reason. Their actions were entirely predictable, as long as he fed his auxiliary computer the correct data while dealing with them. They desired food, they desired sleep, they desired a modicum of entertainment to keep them sane while Prowl completed his work in the office and attempted to find them temporary placement in a school setting. He realized that the first morning he brought them in to work with him, the night after their rather abrupt arrival in his life. C

It was Jazz who suggested he take the twins to the local park, and the police shrink (the only one Prowl had available to use, until the twins were properly registered in the system and taken into the custody of the state) who agreed. So he’d found the nearest park, loaded up his datawork onto a pad, and taken the boys there for the afternoon. 

The park was large, with a swing set, a play structure shaped like a large crystal formation and dotted with tunnels and climbing equipment, a small track with modular obstacles for sparklings to practice driving. There was even a small garden for sparklings to practice caring for crystals, with supplies set aside to feed and take cuttings from them. To the side of the park was a small kiosk where creators could purchase sweets or, if they had a low-income voucher, receive a subsidized, healthy snack for their young sparkling free of charge. 

He hadn’t thought about the fact that the boys had grown up in a world very different from the one he’d just brought them into. 

Later, he’d sworn he’d only looked away for a moment. Planning the next Pit raid had taken more of his RAM than he’d intended, and it’d diverted his attention for what he’d later swear was just a moment. 

It was the screaming that brought him back to himself. The screaming, and the smell of fire. 

The red one - name still unknown - had taken several of the planted crystals and started a fire under the play structure by striking them against each other. Prowl hadn’t even known that they had unstable crystals in sparkling gardens. There were fifteen - sixteen? - sparklings with him under the crystal play structure, some of them with toys in hand. Most of them were cheering him on. Someone of them, and Prowl suspects he will never know who, had dragged some of obstacles off of the track to block themselves into the play structure. It was hollow in the center, like a small courtyard, with netted-in bridges crossing between each crystal-shaped outcropping. No adult would be small enough to get in, and just a glance at the panicking creators in the playground told him that there wasn’t a single flyer among them. 

He’d found the red one, and the flames were rather surprisingly under control, so it was the _lack_ of the yellow sparkling that concerned him. The red one would keep the fire contained for a few more minutes, until he could locate Sunstreaker. 

A hand closed around his shoulder just as he was about to turn from the scene and look for his missing sparkling. “Where are you going? You’re police, aren’t you?” 

Prowl looked up, optics meeting the rather frantic, pale ones of an obviously distressed creator. “I am attempting to locate my own sparkling during this time -“ 

“Well ours are trapped in that fragging _thing_ with an active fire!” 

_And you can’t deal with it on your own?_

...he’d probably get fired if he said that to a civilian. 

He draws his shoulders back, cursing the height difference between the average Iaconian and Praxan, and makes his way to the play structure. 

The light, plastic obstacles had been piled over the three entrances to the inside of the play structure. It’d been done in such a way that the objects were braced against each other _and_ the play structure, and the points of tension were on the other side of the blockade. The sparklings could get out, and not a single adult could get _in_. Prowl was almost impressed by it. 

“Sparkling,” he raised his voice just loud enough that he thought the sparkling could hear him. “Let me in. Now.” Laughter was the only response, followed by the sounds of sparklings knocking against each other and faces smooshed against the viewports set into the side of the play structure. “Your brother is missing, you know. I would very much like your help to go find him.” 

A little purple optic is pressed against the hole between one obstacle and another. “I know where he is!” 

“Do you, know? Do you know how many laws you’re currently breaking by lighting a fire in the middle of a park?” 

“... um.” A hand replaces the optic. “This many?” 

Prowl darts forward, grabbing the little hand in his own. He can only fit two of his fingers and his thumb into the hole, and it’s enough to squeeze tiny fingers between his fingers and thumb. “About thirteen, actually. Now. If you want me to let you go, you’re going to push the block three down from the top.” It had taken Prowl less than a minute to identify the correct block to have the entire wall come tumbling down. 

“But -“ 

“ _Now_. Or you won’t be allowed to have dessert tonight.” That’s what normal creators do, right? Take away desert? 

Do the boys even know what dessert is? 

Well. It’s all he has. 

“Desert.” 

“Desert.” There was a moment of hesitation, and then the wall went down. Prowl let go of him only long enough for the obstacles to fall, and then he was reaching in to pull the red one into his arms. 

There was a chorus of disappointed yells - apparently the red bit wasn’t the only one prone to pyromania - before creators were swooping in to sweep their sparklings away. He could hear sirens in the distance. Good; the fire brigade would handle the flames still inside the play structure. 

He pulled the sparkling out and towards the torn-apart garden, plopping him down on the ground away from the chaos in the playground. “So. Where is your brother?” 

The red sparkling’s grin was absolutely _vicious_ , and he pointed to the little food kiosk in the corner of the park. It’d been forgotten about in the chaos. 

Prowl was starting to realize that forgetting about it was the plan; it’s surrounded by sparklings as well, and there isn’t much of the actual _kiosk_ left. “... you planned a raid with the other sparklings and used the fire as a distraction.” 

He hadn’t known, at the time, if they were monsters or geniuses. 

— 

“We weren’t that bad.” 

“You ate so much candy that you purged, then told the firefighters that you didn’t know those crystals would cause a fire. You were both terrible little monsters, and you know it.” He pets Sideswipe’s audial horn, laughing despite himself. “I wasn’t even angry. I was too impressed to be angry.” 

“We still got dessert that night, too.” Sideswipe mumbles. “It was only the second time we’d had cake. We tried to east the entire cake by ourselves and you just... _let us_.” He laughs, like he can still just barely believe it. 

“In my defense, I’d never raised sparklings before. I was going off of what I saw when I watched terrible daytime television with Jazz.” 

“Who gave you absolutely no good advice, we know.” 

“You were both terribly intelligent sparklings.” He 

“Yeah, well, we had a mech who gave us a good start.” 

They don’t move for the rest of the day, even after Ratchet starts griping at them. He never left them, after all. Not even after they set a playground on fire.


End file.
